


How to Behave in a Waiting Room

by jericho



Category: Blur
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2012-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-07 06:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/427962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jericho/pseuds/jericho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Graham punches someone's china cabinet and is taken to the hospital. It gives Damon and Alex a chance to bond in a waiting room. This was in response to a "have them kiss in a strange place" challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Behave in a Waiting Room

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in 2004 and takes place in circa The Great Escape.

The room had the kind of sterile lighting associated with shopping malls and school classrooms, devoid of emotion or personality, the sort of lighting that served a purpose. Broken legs were set back into place under this lighting. Babies were pushed into the world under the flat white glow, heart attack victims were defibrillated and, in this case, a hand was being stitched.   
  
Alex sat on the slippery orange couch, his long legs forming a bridge to the wooden table. The heels of his shoes tore at magazine covers and made it difficult to get his footing. Hospitals irritated him. When a person found himself in one, he couldn't leave whenever he felt like it. Either duty or illness bound people to waiting rooms, and Alex hated the lack of free will.  
  
Damon sat next to him, legs opened obscenely like he was too tired to sit up straight. His eyelids drooped, lips parted from more lack of strength. Alex looked down at The Economist magazine in his lap, opened to an article about the new global elite. Alcohol prevented him from absorbing much of it, or rather the memory of alcohol. The drinking had stopped when Graham put his hand through someone's china cabinet. He'd wailed when he pulled it out, and drops of blood fell and made polka dots on the white carpet. That had been the end of the party, and they'd dragged Graham out cursing and trailing blood to the door.  
  
"What was he thinking?" Alex asked again.   
  
"I don't know." Damon's right leg twitched in a steady, nervous rhythm.  
  
"At least it's his right hand and not his left one."   
  
"Neither hand is really good when you play the fucking guitar for a living," Damon said. To another musician, it was stating the obvious, but Damon seemed to forget Alex was a musician sometimes. Alex felt a little like background noise, a sidekick who existed for places like waiting rooms.   
  
Alex looked over at the matching orange chair where Dave was curled into a fetal position, feet hooked under one of the wooden arms. Alex thought it was remarkable that Dave could sleep in that position without sliding off and becoming a big drunken heap on the floor, although Alex himself had tucked his knees to his chest to sleep on people's sofas, and passed out on mounds of dirty clothes in shoebox-sized tour bus bunks. Dave's mouth hung open like a fly trap, facial features distorted into a pile of slack muscles. "I envy him."  
  
"If Graham did real damage, I'm going to fucking kill him," Damon said. Lately Damon had used any number of Graham's cute nicknames. Grez, Gra, Coxon, and when they were feeling particularly feisty, Leslie. Today it was "Graham." No additional niceties.  
  
"I'm sure he didn't. He's leapt off balconies and gotten his head beaten in and he barely fucking remembers it the next day." Alex envisioned shards of glass cutting into tender flesh, tendons severing and recoiling like broken kite strings. It was morbidly fascinating, the idea of a gifted musician's professional lifespan being cut short by a desperate gasp for attention and too much whiskey. But that was rock 'n' roll. When it happened, it was hard to tell if it was real damage or one of Graham's numerous flesh wounds. The more he drank, the more he showed up the next day with black eyes and split lips, hobbling on sore legs and rubbing at bruised cheekbones.  
  
Damon gnawed on his fingernails, foot tapping to an imaginary beat. In Graham's absence Damon seemed to take on Graham's mannerisms, like there had to be someone in the room with the same weird, twitching quirks. Alex looked back at the magazine and couldn't remember where he'd stopped reading. Might as well converse.  
  
"He'll be fine," Alex said again. He glanced at his wrist and remembered he'd traded his watch a week ago for the jacket he was wearing. A light brown suit jacket with silk-lined pockets, probably inherited at least one generation ago, wearing on the elbows and too short to cover Alex's wrists. He liked it, and he'd had the watch too long anyway. He tossed the magazine on the table with the page still folded open and leaned his head back on the couch, examining the white tiled ceiling. "I fucking hate waiting."  
  
"I fucking know, Alex. Jesus."  
  
Alex stayed silent, but even the drunkest parts of him cringed from the tone. Damon's outlet for stress was always verbal -- witless, short tempered snapping that made the most relaxed people freeze for a millisecond. It was clipped, impatient and loveless. Tense. "I know," Damon repeated, quieter this time. His leg stopped twitching and he heaved a long sigh.   
  
Alex fished in his jacket pocket and his fingers touched his cigarette pack. He flipped open the top and pulled out a cigarette. The sound of the lighter was crisp against the backdrop of distant speakers and the ding of the elevator door just down the hall. He drew a long drag of smoke into his lungs and it felt good.   
  
"I'm just...." Damon said.  
  
"I know." Damon was rarely apologetic, even in the first two words of his sentence, and Alex didn't want to break the moment. It was enough that he'd started to say something. The first two words were enough to give Alex a nice fantasy of what the rest of them were going to be. The fantasy was usually better. Alex looked at his feet and filled in the rest with his imagination. I'm just stressed, I'm just worried, I'm just tired and want to go home.  
  
A pair of sky blue scrubs appeared in Alex's peripheral vision. He turned his head to see a nurse in front of him, name tag hanging on a string around her neck. He saw the picture on her ID before his head tilted back and he saw the face that matched it. "Sir, if you don't put out your cigarette you're going to have to leave."  
  
"Oh. Right." Alex loosened his fingers and let the cigarette drop, stopping it with his heel before it rolled across the linoleum tiles. It crushed under his foot, barely smoked. A waste of a good fag, he thought as the nurse bent and picked it up.   
  
Alex heard the mumble even as she walked away. "Prick."  
  
"Slag," Alex said automatically.  
  
He looked over to see Damon's head back in noiseless laughter, eyes looking more tired than drunken now. "Graham owes me a fag," Alex said.  
  
"Be sure you get it from him."  
  
"I fucking will." Alex almost laughed himself but the moment was gone. The lights seemed to hum as he looked over at Damon's profile. Messy blond hair, parted lips, regal nose against the backdrop of cheap artwork on the wall. Alex reached out and put his hand on Damon's neck, fingertips brushing the cotton neckline of his shirt and then digging a little to coax him sideways. "C'mere."  
  
"What?" Damon leaned closer anyway, facing Alex like he knew what was coming. Closer and closer, and Alex watched Damon's eyes close and head tilt to the right, a comfortable routine. By the time their lips met, their mouths were open, the kiss sloppy, both of them too tired for any of the usual nuance or passion. It was just a brief meeting of tongues and mismatched lips, quick comfort in an otherwise awkward setting. Alex wasn't sure what made him do it. Maybe it was watching Damon fidget. Maybe it was seeing his genuine concern. Either way, it was lazy and comforting, like they were anywhere in the world other than a room with an ugly orange couch and flourescent lighting.  
  
Damon pulled away and sat straight, running his thumb along his bottom lip. "You really want them to throw us out of here." His smile was so quick an untrained eye wouldn't notice it. Alex looked at the black smear of ash on the linoleum, the dying place of a perfectly good cigarette.  
  
Dave twitched, head lifting off the back of the chair, eyes open just enough that Alex could see the drunken gleam. "Are we there yet?"  
  
"Not yet," Alex said.  
  
"Oh." Dave's eyes slipped closed, cushion creaking as he got back into position. He'd be sore as hell the next morning. They all would, but they were u


End file.
